by Sam Hooker
“Well, I kept to myself a lot.”
“It wasn’t hyperbole,” said the tall man. “We know everybody.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“Why, Elroy told you,” said the short man, “we’re the Coolest!”
“Er, right,” said Sloot. This whole thing was unsettling. They were obviously lunatics, but Sloot was more accustomed to the waving-a-dagger-in-your-face types. He knew where he stood with them. “You all look very cool in your white suits. Very … dashing.”
“No, not cool,” said the short man, finally starting to raise his voice like a proper lunatic, “the Coolest! You see, Lucia? I told you your idiot nephew knows as much about marketing as a loaf of bread!”
“He’s my sister’s kid, Donovan,” said Lucia, “you know how she gets.”
“He graduated from marketing school and asked us for a job,” Donovan mumbled to Sloot conspiratorially. “It was supposed to be an internship, but before I knew it we were all head-to-toe white linen and ‘re-branded’—whatever that means—with new stationery and everything. The Coolest! Have you ever heard anything more ostentatious?”
“No,” said the tall man. He lit a cigarette.
Lucia drew herself up with an indignation that Sloot had only seen in mothers when middle names were about to get thrown around. “Marco! You said you’d quit!”
“And I will,” said Marco, blowing a cloud of smoke in Lucia’s direction. “Not today, though. I’m too stressed out.”
“That’s understandable,” said Donovan. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
“Er, I’m sorry,” said Sloot, falling gracefully into his favorite way to enter a conversation, “but could you tell me what’s going on, please?”
“We were hoping you might be able to shed a little light on that, Sloot Gefahr Peril. Do you mind if I call you Sloot?”
“Please.”
“Thank you. Sloot, until a few minutes ago, we thought we knew everyone and everything, but none of us saw this coming, and we have no idea who you are.”
“Are you … gods?”
“Hardly,” laughed Lucia. “We’re inter-cosmic—”
“We’re gods,” Donovan interjected. “Please, Lucia, can we get some answers out of him before we obliterate his mind with truths beyond his capacity to understand?”
“Oh, fine.”
“Everything was going fine, Sloot, until the Dark started spilling out into the Narrative. We had to scramble a crew to clean it up, there’s a literal mountain of paperwork that’s going to have to be filed about this—a literal mountain, Sloot—and the only thing we can’t account for is you.”
“We should cut him open,” said Marco, lighting a new cigarette off the end of his last one.
“He’s a ghost,” said Lucia.
“I’m sure we’ve got a knife for that.”
“And I’m sure there’s an easier way to sort this out than giving Sloot the old ghost knife treatment,” said Donovan.
Marco made a dismissive gesture, then looked really cool smoking his cigarette. Sloot thought the only way he could have looked any cooler was if he wasn’t smoking.
“You’re not wrong,” said Lucia. “And yes, I can read your mind.”
“Active thoughts only,” Donovan clarified. “So tell us, Sloot—or just think it out loud, if you prefer—who are you, and how did you spill the Dark into the Narrative?”
“Me? I didn’t do this!”
“He certainly believes it,” said Lucia.
“Oh, well,” said Donovan, “I suppose it would have been too easy if we got to just blame everything on the oddity and call it a day.”
“The oddity?”
“You,” said Marco. He put his hand in his pocket in a way that left little doubt that he had a knife in there.
“Oh.”
“So tell me, Sloot,” said Donovan, “where did you come from?”
“Salzstadt,” said Sloot. “Well, my mother was Carpathian—is Carpathian—oh, I’m not sure if she’s still alive! That must make me the worst son ever.”
“Doubtful,” said Lucia. “There’s Marco, right there.”
Marco made a gesture so insanely vulgar that it gave Sloot the spiritual equivalent of a migraine headache. His ears started ringing, and the grass briefly turned a color he hadn’t known existed.
“Ignore them,” said Donovan. “What else?”
“Not much to tell, really,” Sloot shouted over the ringing. “I grew up, went to work in the Three Bells counting house, corrected a report, was promoted to Willie Hapsgalt’s financier—”
“Oh,” said Donovan. “There it is.”
“Sorry, there what is?”
“We were wondering why the Hapsgalts were still so rich! I swear, it’s like you turn your head for a second and the richest family in all the known universe is wreaking havoc with the natural order of reality.”
“Yes,” said Lucia. “It’s just like that.”
“Er, pardon me,” said Sloot, “but did you say you were wondering why the Hapsgalts were still so rich?”
Donovan nodded. “The matter kept getting away from us. The last time I checked, a fellow named Vasily Pritygud was supposed to have written a report to fix it.”
The report. The report! The one that Sloot corrected! The one that started all of this mess! But how? If that report was the will of the Coolest, how did it come to Sloot for corrections?
“Anyway,” Donovan continued, “that’s where everything went awry. Can we get them all together so we can get rid of it?”
“Get rid of … it?”
“Yes,” said Lucia. “All of it, I’m afraid.”
“All of what?”
“It. Everything. Well, not everything. The Old Country, Carpathia, a few patches of the Hereafter … it’ll be a lot of work, but it’ll be a heck of a lot easier than trying to fix it.”
“This is the worst,” said Marco. He flicked the butt of his cigarette away, littering with more ferocity than Sloot had ever seen. He reached instinctively for his whistle, then recalled that he was a ghost. In any case, he doubted that the Ministry of Sanitation had jurisdiction to “rehabilitate” inter-cosmic gods in white suits.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Donovan, “that’s for sure.”
“Wait,” said Sloot, more panicked than he’d ever been before, “why don’t we—”
“Just a moment, Sloot,” said Donovan. He snapped his fingers, and suddenly everyone was there. They were in the full exertion of war, as though nothing had happened.
“Wait a minute!” Donovan yelled above the din of war between the goblins and the fairies. “Not you.”
He snapped his fingers again, and the two armies disappeared. A handful of people remained, Vlad being the only one among them who seemed disappointed to no longer be in the thick of battle.
“That’s right,” shouted Constantin, “and keep running! You lack the mettle to trifle with a Hapsgalt man, sirs!”
“That’s better,” said Donovan. He looked around, mild confusion commingling with annoyance on his face. “Is this everybody?”
“Hardly,” said Willie. “I wouldn’t turn up to this party. Not before I hit a bunch of better parties first, so I could rub everyone’s noses in it.” His smile turned to chagrin. “Hey, I exploded!”
“You weren’t supposed to,” said Gregor. “You were supposed to absorb enough energy to defeat our foes, but that idiot Bartleby thinks everything is a game!”
“Don’t blame me, you vere the one who vouldn’t stop hitting yourself.”
“Quiet,” said Donovan, “all of you. There’s still someone missing, but I can’t put my finger on who.”
“Whom,” said Sloot.
Donovan shot him a look that asked, “really?”
Greta had been brought back, though her throat was still open and gushing with blood. Vlad was undeterred by the arterial spray, and the two of them took the opportunity to make out like teenagers tr
ying to prove they’d done this sort of thing before, and you were a real nerd if you hadn’t. Mrs. Knife grimaced, backing away and waving her knife at anyone who moved. Arthur lounged in mid-air, contemplating the Dark above. Nan hid from Constantin behind a nearby tree, Dandelion and Lilacs hovered nearby, and Nicoleta tried not to be too obvious about sneaking glances at Vlad and Greta. She grinned.
Roman laughed. He was grinning from ear to ear. “I didn’t imagine that the Coolest would be here at the end. Oh, that’s rich!”
“Wait a minute,” said Donovan, “I know you.”
“Of course, you do,” said Lucia. “We know everybody.” She shrugged at Sloot.
“You’re …” Donovan snapped his fingers a couple of times while looking skyward, ostensibly hoping it would jar his memory. “Oh, right. You don’t have a name, do you?”
“I’ve gone by many. They all know me as Roman.”
“Your name’s not really Roman?” asked Sloot.
“It may as well be,” Roman replied. “I was never given a proper one. Hang on a minute.”
Roman flexed his shoulders. A look of relief came over him as a pair of leathery wings unfolded from his back.
“You’re a demon!” Sloot was thunderstruck. He’d been palling around with a demon this whole time! No wonder things kept getting worse. Had his mother known?
“An enigma demon, to be precise.” Roman smiled, and then to Sloot’s bewildered look said, “We keep secrets.”
“More than that,” said Nicoleta. “You are secrets.”
“Right you are, love,” said Roman. “Every enigma has a secret at his or her core, sort of like an initial investment to get the business off the ground. Only I don’t know what my core secret is.”
“That’s a fun bit of paradox,” said Arthur, who was suddenly interested in the conversation. Philosophers are very fond of paradoxes, given their utility in avoiding real work.
“Fun for you,” said Roman, “but irritating for me. I don’t get to know my secret, just everyone else’s. Tragic, really.”
“Right,” said Donovan. “I’m sure you’re to blame for all of this, and I’ll work it out soon enough. I still have to find out who else is missing, though.”
Roman’s hands started to glow as he started working through a series of contorted gestures. “While you’re working that out, I’d like to get what’s coming to me, if you don’t mind.”
A portal appeared on the ground in the midst of all assembled, and twinkling lights arose from it like embers from a fire. The embers increased in number like bubbles in a boiling pot, and before the metaphor had an opportunity to get any further out of hand, they coalesced into an intensely beautiful woman.
“What the—” she began.
“Hello, Gwen,” said Roman.
“Gwen!” said Marco, dropping his too-cool-to-care-about-anything facade for the first time since Sloot had met him, and grinning like a love-struck schoolboy.
“You know each other?” asked Donovan.
“We know everybody,” said Lucia for what seemed like the dozenth time, based on her level of irritation.
“Roman,” said Gwen curtly, and then her demeanor shifted to sultry. “Marco.” She blew him a kiss.
All eyes were on Gwen, and most of the mouths below said eyes were hanging open.
“Careful,” Roman warned, “Gwen is a love demon.”
Sloot caught himself staring and panicked. He had a girlfriend! He was no good at lying about things, and was sure that he’d end up getting caught, regardless of the fact that Myrtle wasn’t there. From what Sloot had heard, girlfriends didn’t have to be able to read the future in order to figure out those sorts of things.
“A love demon who was in the middle of something,” said Gwen. “I assume I’ve been summoned because someone would rather use sorcery than talk to someone they find attractive? That’s usually what happens.”
“Not this time,” said Roman. “It’s time for me to collect.”
Gwen fixed Roman with a blank look, which slowly reworked itself into terrified realization. “You don’t mean—”
“Oh, I definitely do.”
Gwen looked up at the Dark. The curve of her neck made Sloot wish he’d taken music lessons so he could write an opera about it.
“Oh,” said Gwen. Her naturally rosy cheeks went pale. “Oh, no, Roman. What have you done?”
“I’d say I’ve proven my point.”
Gwen looked up at the Dark again. “Oh, this is bad.”
“Yes,” said Roman, “it is. Now pay up.”
“I can’t! Roman, you can’t possibly expect—”
“I can, and I do.” Roman was calm, a giddy smile on his face. That made Sloot all the more nervous.
“But look at this!” Gwen pointed up to the Dark. “I’d forgotten about that stupid wager. I never thought you’d actually go through with it!”
Roman laughed. “You of all people should know better than to underestimate a demon in a wager.”
“Against a mortal, sure. But that wasn’t serious! We were drunk!”
“I’m never more serious than when I’m drunk.”
That sounds about right, Sloot thought.
“If it was an official wager, there will be a contract,” said Donovan. “Allistair?”
An imp appeared in a puff of black smoke. “Yes, m’lord?”
“That was fast,” said Sloot.
“He’s on retainer,” said Donovan. He pointed at Roman and Gwen. “Allistair, be a dear and find me the contract for a wager between these two demons?”
“As you wish,” said Allistair. He disappeared in a very similar puff of black smoke.
“Now then,” Donovan continued, “while he’s working on that, why don’t you explain this little wager for us? I don’t know anything about it, which is disconcerting.”
“Very well,” said Roman.
Roman's Wager
The tale that Roman wove for them was set long ago in the Old Country, when it had been called whatever it had been called before. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference at that point if Roman had told them, but he was an enigma demon. They didn’t let go of secrets easily.
He and Gwen were lying atop a hill that would one day become a very affluent neighborhood, looking up at the stars and sharing a bottle of wine. The last of several that they’d shared that night, in fact.
To hear Roman tell it, Gwen had been giggling incessantly, and wouldn’t stop going on about how grand love was. Roman had recently gone through a mutually agreed-upon breakup with an efreet—which wasn’t the way that Gwen remembered it, but who was telling the story?—and, in any case, disagreed on the point of love’s grandeur.
Roman made a number of dashing and charismatic good points, but Gwen was in no mood to listen to reason. They argued until sunrise, at which point Roman suggested a wager.
Enigma demons don’t know their own essential secret, but they are able to divulge them at will. Doing so will cause them to unravel in a fashion that Roman had been assured is quite literal. It’s like pushing a button that causes their hearts to leap out of their chests. “Oh, that’s what that looks like,” they might just have time to think before they keel over dead.
Perhaps Roman was tired, or perhaps Gwen was being so objectively insufferable about the amazing power of love that he was driven to the end of his wits. In either case, he made a wager with Gwen, insisting that he could prove that love was the greatest evil in the universe. If he was wrong, he’d divulge his essential secret to her and do his best to smile while she watched him unravel. However, if he won, she would have to reveal to him the greatest secret that she knew: the exact number of Unknowable Secrets.
“There’s only one way that she could possibly know that,” said Donovan, glaring at Marco.
“Marco!” shouted Lucia.
“What? Look at her!” He made some wavy hand motions that approximated Gwen’s curvature. She batted her eyelashes.
“You
told her an Unknowable Secret because she’s pretty?”
“No,” said Marco. “I told her how many Unknowable Secrets there are, because of what she can do with all of that …” he made the wavy hand motions again.
Donovan closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The number of Unknowable Secrets is an Unknowable Secret, you imbecile!”
“How was I supposed to know?”
“You’re one of the Coolest!”
Marco laughed and ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I am.”
“Idiot.”
“Anyway,” said Roman, pointing up at the Dark, “there’s my proof. Pay up.”
“How is that proof?” asked Gwen.
“That was the result of a war that Vlad fought because of her love for Greta.”
“Excuse me, please,” said Lilacs, “but we fought that war to keep the goblins out of Carpathia.”
“If you wanted to keep the goblins out of Carpathia so badly, why did Vlad invite them in?”
“And you think that proves that love is the greatest evil in the universe?”
“Of course it does,” said Roman. “If it wasn’t for her love for Greta, Vlad would have left the goblins to rot in the Old Country without a second thought! She wouldn’t have convened a war council with the fairies, and she certainly wouldn’t have opened the border to Mrs. Knife.”
“I still don’t see how that makes love the root of all evil.”
“Look around! War! Death! The Dark is literally trying to crush the life out of reality, and is doing such a good job that the Coolest themselves had to intervene! All for love. If you’re not willing to concede this one, I’m going to have to call for a legal intervention.”
There was a puff of black smoke, and Allistair re-appeared.
“Here you are, m’lord,” said Allistair. He handed a file to Donovan.
“Thank you,” said Donovan, who must have taken a speed reading course. He flipped through the pages so quickly that Sloot cringed, sure that he’d tear one eventually. “Well, this just can’t be! This appears to be a completely valid wager, but it shouldn’t have been possible! We’ve gone to great lengths to ensure that enigma demons aren’t capable of gambling with their essential secrets or the Unknowable Secrets under any circumstances.”